Cobalt Release 3.4

(Q2 2018)

The 3.4 release will be big on new features. We have spent the past few releases on reworking our solutions to take advantage of the capabilities available in the latest version of Dynamics 365 and improving the performance of our portals. These efforts have been worthwhile and will make future customer upgrades much easier going forward, but we are excited to get back to some of the other big items in our backlog.

Reports Overhaul

Cobalt currently supports both on-premises and online Dynamics CRM/365 customers and we have been working on the best way to provide reports to both for the past few years. Dynamics 365 uses Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as it’s native reporting tool, but with the ability to leverage dashboards, charts, views, Word and Excel templates, and Power BI in the newer versions of Dynamics 365 Cobalt has slowly moved away from using SSRS. In this release, we will finalize our reporting overhaul to ensure that our customers can quickly and easily retrieve and analyze data in their systems.

Application/Wizard Designer

This is the next step in the evolution of our forms and web elements. This designer will allow you to create your own multi-step applications on the portal including the ability to take payments. You can then link these forms/applications in using a web element control, so they can be launched from anywhere on your web site. As part of this, we will also be adding a visual form designer to make creating forms and applications much easier for staff.

Revenue Recognition

We will be expanding our revenue recognition capabilities in this release to include automatic recognition for common scenarios. These will include monthly dues revenue recognition, recognizing event registration fees when the event occurs and deferring certification application revenue until the test result is received or the eligibility expires.